New Stances for the Dungeonomicon Monk! Create your own!

[Jerry]

By Fighter-esque techniques, I hope that you're referring to the RoW Fighter.

Core Fighters closest thing to a technique is "moar feats!"

[Dean]

Keep coming up with ideas and I'll be happy to vet them. There is a lot of promise in what you've been working on and the abilities I wrote up are by no means complete or exhaustive. The hardest trick is to make clean mechanics that both capture the flavor in description and their operation. Trust me, I've botched my own fair share and it's one the reasons I work with Frank (everyone needs a second pair of trained eyes).

Allright cool, I appreciate that and that's what I'll do. Make a few dozen of them and I'm bound to get a few jewels out of em. And on the note of the feats I'm interested that you said that. I'd been thinking about doing something like that for some time but never implemented it. I was thinking of making small feat chains, say 3 long, that would give different abilities or even styles of a certain "School". So for the Cobra Monk feats it'd go something like this.....

Cobra School Initiate
You are trained in the basics of the arts of the Cobra School Monks
Prerequisite: Wis 13
Benefit: You become immune to poisons of all kinds.

Cobra School Student
You have learned the style of the Cobra Technique
Prerequisite: Cobra School Initiate, BAB +6
Benefit: You gain a new Fighting Style that grants you the ability to deal piercing damage and force anyone struck by your slam attack to make a Fortitude Save (DC 10 + ½ your character level + your Wisdom Modifier) or suffer 4 points of Constitution Damage.

Cobra School Master
You have mastered the ability to wield the biting poisons of the Cobra School, and have suffused your being with them
Prerequisite: Cobra School Student, BAB +12
Benefit: Any slam attack you make deals 1 point of Constitution Damage

And I think a number of chains like those could do a lot to make the class be able to provide for a much wider range of character ideas and concepts.

To Sigma: I think that as long as mechanical balance is the key concern all the time then where your Monk feels on the versimilitude scale shouldn't matter much. Some people could be flying and launching fireballs and others could just be punching mega hard and fast. As long as it's equal it's all cool.
Now you brought up a ton of great ideas and styles. I'll hit on what points I have something meaningful to say right now. But if there's anything I leave out I'm probably just stewing it over. As to the points you made which I will address.
-Invisibility is slightly different than total concealment. Total Concealment cannot be negated by things that negate invisibility but Invisibility has a few fringe benefits for being totally unseeable. Total Concealment is more like....like just around him gets really really dark and hazy. Kinda.
-I sort've disagree that real Flight shouldn't belong to the Monk in that, like I'd mentioned before I think it allows people to explore different character options. However since you're the second person to say this I'll move it down to the "Unfinished Styles" list, and if a third person says so I'll remove it.
-To the energy toss style: WOOPS. I meant to write that in as taking a standard action to activate. So only one a turn. I'll edit that in the OP.
-Your undead style is wierd, I think it needs to be simplified a lot. Something like your slam channels negative energy so it deals an extra +X damage to any creatures but undead, to which it heals X damage.
-I think the idea of the 2 full round actions was to essentially replicate the idea of Time stop with a more Monk feel.
Finally to the Duplicating Style I have been working on that for a long long time. It's hard because it's very bizzarre. I had two idea's for it that I thought would work. One being a Master Fighting Style that created D3 Mirror Images of you whenever you activated it that lasted one round, the other being a Grand Master Style that created a duplicate of you that recieved a -4 to any roll it made as well as it's AC, but it acts on your initiative with you and dies if it takes any damage. It's sort've based on simalcrum or whatever and it's still a -little- funky, but I don't think it's that broken. I just think it's a little off of working.

[Calibron]

Ugh, no. One feat for Cobra stuff, not three. More like this:

Snake Blooded(Combat)
You like snakes. You are like a snake. Bad Haiku.
Benefits: You gain immunity to injury poisons.
+1: As a swift action you can blind an enemy who fails a Fortitude save by spitting a gob of poison into their eyes with a ranged touch attack(DC 10 + ½ your character level + your Constitution Modifier)
+6 As a swift action you can coat one of your natural weapons with an injury poison; initial and secondary damage 1d8 CON(DC 10 + ½ your character level + your Constitution Modifier). You natural weapon remains poisonous until the beginning of your next turn.
+11 As a swift action you can grant yourself a +8 racial bonus to grapple checks, and Constrict(1d8+1½ Str Mod). These abilities remain until the beginning of your next turn.
+16 As a Full-Round action you may "Shed Your Skin" and remove all non-Mind-Effecting status effects active on you and regain your full hit points. If you are afflicted with a status effect that won't let you take a Full-Round action you "Shed Your Skin" within 1d10 days(this includes death). Any effect that destroys half or more of your body stops you from recovering.

[Username17]

A better haiku would be:

You can fight like snake.
But can you be like a snake?
With poison fist, yes.

It's 5, 7, - not 3,5,3.

-Username17

[Calibron]

Ah yes, thank you, it certainly wouldn't be the first simple thing I'd forgotten; earlier this year I actually forgot my birthday.

[Maxus]

Okay, here's a couple of ideas I'm throwing out there. They're kind of obvious when you think about it.

Fighting Style
-While active, your fighting style grants one extra attack at your full base attack bonus.

Master Fighting Style
-While active, your fighting style lets you perform a Full Attack action as a standard action, or, as a full attack action, one attack per three levels of monk, each at your full attack bonus.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Fighting Style
-While active, your fighting style grants one extra attack at your full base attack bonus.

That would be interesting. A swift action to make an attack whenever you like, plus some other bonus. It would be a quick way to get a skirmisher up and running, but would also work nicely for warrior/mages.

[Dean]

To Caliborn: Hmmm, yes and no in my opinion. Here's what I see as the strong, and weak points of your idea. As a weak point I will come right out here and say I think the Tome's re-worked feat concept isn't workable. See it's not that it isn't a good idea but it's just not workable. See if you write one feat like that you've got to make all of your feats like that, because the power level of all of the Tome Style feats is vastly above standard feats. And I mean above the good ones like Power Attack, not feats like Endurance which might as well say "Your character gets cancer" because if you're gonna make a feat no one will ever take you might as well have fun with it. And as an average 6th level party will have somewhere around 15-20 feats total that is -waaaay- more feats than I'm willing to rewrite. Anyway. I DO think that your statement of "Make it one feat" has some value however. If we were to make it as one feat apiece I would say make them tactical feats, and throw in some prerequisites to make it so the characters had to work a little to get them. As the thing I liked about my feat chain system was that you couldn't really just decide one level to be a Cobra School Monk. If you gave it a prereq they'd have to work in a level earlier or so then you've got some gameplay time to show off your "Cobra-ness" to your party before you go all snakey. So how about something like this

Cobra School (Tactical)
Prerequisite: Armored in Life class feature, Wis 13, BAB+6, Must have one Fighting Style, or Master Fighting Style that increases Dexterity
Spit Poison: You may take a standard action to make a ranged touch attack as if with an improvised weapon. If this attack hits your opponent must make a Fortitude Save (DC 10 + ½ your character level + your Constitution Modifier) or be Blind for 1d4 rounds.
Fang Strike Technique:You gain a new Fighting Style that grants you the ability to deal piercing damage and force anyone struck by your slam attack to make a Fortitude Save (DC 10 + ½ your character level + your Wisdom Modifier) or suffer 4 points of Constitution Damage.
Shed Skin: Once per day if you become stunned, petrified or paralyzed you may remove the condition at the end of your turn.

Whaddya think?

To Maxus: The Fighting Style I really dig. I think it's perfectly balanced honestly and beautifully simplistic. The Master Fighting Style I'm not so sure of. The Full Attack as a standard is well balanced I think but I'm not sure if you need more than that, also the second part is a wierd sorta mechanic. Anyway I'm immediately putting the Fighting Style on the unfinished list and if no ones speaks against it in a day or two I'm putting it on the finished list. Great Job.

[JonSetanta]

Snake Blooded(Combat)
You like snakes. You are like a snake. Bad Haiku.
...
+16 As a Full-Round action you may "Shed Your Skin" and remove all non-Mind-Effecting status effects active on you and regain your full hit points. If you are afflicted with a status effect that won't let you take a Full-Round action you "Shed Your Skin" within 1d10 days(this includes death). Any effect that destroys half or more of your body stops you from recovering.

Been reading or watching a lot of Orochimaru action in Naruto? harhar

The bit I wonder about these stances combining with feats is in the unpredictable aspect of how they mix. Someone, somewhere, always manages to put 1+1+1 together and squeeze out a 9000.
Can munchkinism be prevented to a certain extent through non-stacking bonuses, forcing powergamers to consider more varied options rather than a super-specialist? Or are we going for combat methods that would stack X feat + Y stances + Z race and once again break the game, even without spells?
I don't mean specifically or even about the Snake feat, but in a general sense of adding even more stuff to an already diverse remake.

Too many cooks ruined the 100' magic pizza that is 3.x, maybe I'm being fearful that the same will happen with anything else.
Like the Tome Samurai nudging players to use picks, axes and scythes over katanas due to sheer numeric advantage.

deanruel87: Simulacrum. That's the one. I was thinking clones could either be a percentage reduction of the owner's levels or a set amount (-10 for instance) but certainly not anywhere near equal to the original.

[Calibron]

Sigma: Nope, haven't seen Naruto in quite a while, never saw Orochimaru in action either.

People are able to so easily munchkinize in 3.X because whenever it had material written for it the right hand hadn't a fucking clue what the left hand was doing, also several of the fingers were moderately retarded. As long as we can keep all of our Tome-compatible material together we can pick out each others accidental synergies and get a re-write pretty quickly. Since we generally only make just enough mechanics to express the material that needs expressing we probably won't suffer from bloat, and since none of this is set in stone, or paper, necessary revisions are quick and easy. I don't think we have anything to fear unless TGD itself starts suffering from member bloat.

deanruel87: Your Shed Skin ability essentially doesn't function. You can't take actions when you are Stunned or Petrified(that's kind of the point), so you can't take a full round action to remove those conditions. If shedding is a purely mental action then you can slip out of paralyzation.

I'm not going to quote "The Failure of Feats" at you, so suffice it to say that I disagree with your stance on the matter.

[Maxus]

Fighting Style
-While active, your fighting style grants one extra attack at your full base attack bonus.

That would be interesting. A swift action to make an attack whenever you like, plus some other bonus. It would be a quick way to get a skirmisher up and running, but would also work nicely for warrior/mages.

Actually, I was thinking of a fighting style to duplicate the 3.5 Monk's Flurry of Blows. Only without the sucking.

I suppose if it were a Grandmaster fighting style, it'd be the Master level Flurry as a standard action, and one attack/two Monk levels as a full-attack action.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Maybe I'm just crazy, but it seems like these would be a great equivalent to the blooded-type feats. Something like:

[Monk] - these feats scale with fighting styles. Additionally, you may only have 1 per fighting style (you can take your first with your first fighting style, the 2nd with your Master, and the 3rd with the Grand Master)

this way we can have:

Snake School[Monk]
By striking vital areas of the body, you can steal an opponent's ability to fight.
Your natural slam attacks may deal piercing damage if you wish
Fighting Style - You become immune to poisons. This does not affect initial ability damage retroactively, but it does affect secondary ability damage. Additionally, while immune to poisons, you may coat weapons without incurring a risk of poisoning yourself.
Master Fighting Style - any slam attack that hits does 4 points of Constition damage on a failed fort save. The save DC for this effect is Wisdom based.
Grand Master Fighting Style - Any enemy you hit with your slam attack loses 2 Constitution and 2 Constitution per round. An enemy will only lose 2 Con/round in this manner.

Cheetah School[Monk]
You move fast and strike faster
Your natural slam attacks may deal slashing damage if you wish
Fighting Style - While active, this fighting style grants Pounce and a 30' bonus to your movement speed.
Master Fighting Style - While active, this fighting style grants Improved Grab and Rake.
Grand Master Fighting Style - While active, you may act twice each round due to your unusual quickness (you do not gain an extra swift action).

Bo-staff Style[Monk]
You have awesome bo-fighting skills
All of the bonuses that normally apply to your slam attack apply when you are using a Bo staff/staff/quarterstaff/pike/longspear or stick-like weapon.
Fighting Style - you gain an additional 5 feet of reach with any staff (you may attack nearby squares as well)
Master Fighting Style - Any opponent that attacks you provokes an AoO that must be a Trip or Disarm attempt, you gain extra AoOs as if you had the Two Weapon Fighting feat, and you gain a +4 shield bonus to AC.
Grand Master Fighting Style - While active, you may use any staff you wield as if it had the Vorpal and Ruin properties.

Bow Style[Monk]
You have bow-hunting skills, the girls love you
All of the bonuses that normally apply to your slam attack apply when you are using a bow or bow-like weapon.
Fighting Style - While active, you may use a standard action to make 1 bow attack that is automatically considered a critical threat.
Master Fighting Style - While active, your bow shoots energy arrows, and may add your level in an evergy type of damage to each arrow (this multiplies on a critical hit). This energy type must be selected when you first use this fighting style.
Grand Master Fighting Style - While active, you may shoot two arrows at once. Use one attack roll and double the damage dealt.


The Way of the Sword[Monk]
You choose to fight with pointy things, usually a pretty good call.
All of the bonuses that normally apply to your slam attack apply when you are using a sword or sword-like weapon (this includes short swords, long swords, great swords, bastard swords, katanas and other slashing weapons but not piercing weapons such as rapiers).
Fighting Style - While active, you may treat your sword attacks as if the critical range was doubled (17-20 if it was normally 19-20), and it's critical multiplier was increased by 1 (x3 if normally x2)
Master Fighting Style - While active, each successful hit from a sword cuts vital ligments and deals 2 Dexterity damage.
Grand Master Fighting Style - While active, you may use any sword you wield as if it had the Vorpal and Ruin properties.


I figure for the weapon-style ones, the fighting styles are decent enough to be used every once in a while, but that the primary benefit is the ability to use the slam attack bonuses with the weapon.

[CatharzGodfoot]

The bow style is too powerful. The first ability you get puts your first fighting style 3/4 of the way to being a master style. Monks already make uncannily good archers.

[Dean]

deanruel87: Your Shed Skin ability essentially doesn't function. You can't take actions when you are Stunned or Petrified(that's kind of the point), so you can't take a full round action to remove those conditions. If shedding is a purely mental action then you can slip out of paralyzation.

I'm not going to quote "The Failure of Feats" at you, so suffice it to say that I disagree with your stance on the matter.

The Shed Skin thing is addressed in the ability. It says that to use that ability alone you can ignore the fact that you can't normally take actions. I could re-word it if you'd like though but I still want that turn to be lost to you. So it could be something like "You may on your turn remove the condition but you are considered dazed for the round", if you'd prefer.

And I understand the idea behind "The Failure of Feats" I really do, and I respect that you disagree with me, but I maintiain my stance regardless.

To SunTzu: I'll be honest I don't understand exactly how you're saying that system would work. And in general I don't like to introduce new mechanic types where old ones will do. However I do like a lot of the abilities you created there. I think in particular the idea of "Weapon Schools" is something we should address as it's something my group has had a great desire for. How would you feel about doing these as tactical feats as I really feel that the tactical feat angle is the way to go here.

[Calibron]

It'd be simpler to just say that you automatically remove these conditions at the end of your turn, rather than going on about special full-round actions.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

The tactical angle doesn't particularly work because the character has to sacrifice something in order to use the abilities (swift action). What I originally thought was that a character could only have 1 Fighting School ("I, Haduken Tamaru am master of hte Serpent Fist style"). Then, I thought about if one person from one style met another person with another style, they should be able to learn it. However, I still desired a cap, so I capped it at 3 that could only be taken at levels 1, 9 and 15. Adding more is very powerful because it is actually a class feature converted to a feat, an idea that I'm not fond of.

What particular abilities would you think about rolling into a tactical feat?

CatharzGodfoot, what would you think of swapping the 1st and second abilities of the Bow style?

Also, the more I look at the Bow Staff style the more I realize that I want this to be something but I can't think of anything good to add at all.

Also,
Way of the Flaming Fist
You hit people, with your fists, on fire!
You may deal any of your slam attack damage as fire damage.
Fighting Style - While active, if you opt to do fire damage, the victim must make a Reflex save for catch fire. The save DC for this effect is Wisdom based.
Master Fighting Style - While active, anyone that hits you must take 1d6/level in fire damage. They only have to take this damage once.
Grand Master Fighting Style - While active, your slam attack does 1d6/level in a 20' radius burst. You are immune to this effect.

[JonSetanta]

Sigma: Nope, haven't seen Naruto in quite a while, never saw Orochimaru in action either.

Shed Skin in action.

http://www.onemanga.com/Naruto/292/19/


You could also consider a power that spits snakes, although that might be more mage-like...

http://www.onemanga.com/Naruto/294/03/

And then you have the 200 foot long sword-tongue, which never ceases to impress.

http://www.onemanga.com/Naruto/295/14-15/

Maybe I'm just crazy, but it seems like these would be a great equivalent to the blooded-type feats.

I like all of those, and it does seem similar to the bloodline feats, although much more specific in power and less abusable if stacked.

But just a warning, Pounce is a power for Psychic Warriors and monsters/animals at least higher than level 4, not available to L1 characters. Doing so would allow 2-weapon warriors to slaughter most other L1 characters on the first round, unless that's the objective...

[Dean]

Caliborn: As you wish, done.

SunTzu: I agree that it should take actions to use the abilities. If you'll notice my one example version, the Cobra School Tactical feat, has three abilities that ALL take actions. One a swift, one a standard, one a full round. So I think it's a good idea to make feats that give options as opposed to just power boosts, but I think simple power boosts can work too even without actions. So as an example of that, and of what I'm talking about for tactical versions of these lets use this.


Bo-Staff Master
Your skills with the staff make you a powerful opponent
Prerequisite: BAB +6, (Maybe something else staffy, like Weapon Focus Quarterstaff or something?)
Extend Strike: You may count your Quarterstaff as a reach weapon that still allows you to attack adjacent squares.
Twirling Stance: Flanking you confers no bonus to hit to opponents attacks.
One Weapon: You may confer all bonuses that normally apply to your slam attack to attacks you make with your staff.

[Calibron]

Jeez, and I thought the guy with the bone powers was messed up.

[JonSetanta]

Jeez, and I thought the guy with the bone powers was messed up.

He's my favorite. >_<

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Actually, Pounce is available to level 1 barbarians (Lion Totem, Complete Champion, trade fast movement for pounce). The joy of having this as a monk is that you can wield a weapon in one hand and a shield in the other and get your weapon+slam attacks on a charge.

Charging level 1 things usually kill other level 1 things.

[Dean]

I think Pounce is a balanced ability to allow in to the fighting style list. It's powerful certainly but it doesn't seem more so than +4AC. However I think that Pounce should be a generic style ability and not one of the "School" feats. I think in fact that I now understand what the seperation between the two should be.

Styles should be abilities that could be used for any Monk to maintain the classes viability on the power curve, as well as to give options to the different kinds of characters who will be Monks.
School feats should be specific to a single archetype of character. They should allow a player to, through the use of one feat, help him slightly redefine the feel of the Monk class so as to better fit his character concept.

So with that in mind I'm putting "Pounce" in as a regular Fighting Style ability, and I will be making a new section in the original post for the Monk School feats being created. I would ask for them to be created in the Tactical feat style as I believe that will work well, and provide a unity to our collaborative efforts.

With that in mind here's my attempt to recreate Suntzu's last school feat and marry it with K's original idea. It also follows basically the same pattern as the Cobra School I made earlier, in that it's two abilities and a Stance that's specific to your niche. I think this might be the way to go with these and I believe I might re-write the Bo-Staff stance I made above to be in line with it.

Way of the Flaming Fist
Fists Afire: You may opt to deal any of your slam attack damage as fire damage.
Fuel the Fire: You may take 1d6 damage a turn to deal an additional 2d6 fire damage to any target you strike with a slam attack that turn.
Inferno: You gain a Fighting Style that grants you the ability to light your body aflame, concealing you within the smoke and damaging those who come too close. While in this Stance you gain concealment and any creature that strikes you or shares your space take 1d6 fire damage for every 2 character levels you have, with a Reflex save (DC 10+1/2 level+Wisdom Modifier) for half damage.

So what do you all think? Idiocy? Brilliance?

Edit: The changes to the original post are now up. School Feats are ready to expand.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

I like my way better.

Also, you may note that I ripped out a few things from other abilities.

For instance, Pounce should be an option for a Monk, and I took the 30' move and timestop for cheetah style because I felt that it fit. In this manner, the monk does not have to select those styles later.

[Dean]

I like my way better.

Also, you may note that I ripped out a few things from other abilities.

For instance, Pounce should be an option for a Monk, and I took the 30' move and timestop for cheetah style because I felt that it fit. In this manner, the monk does not have to select those styles later.

Right, Honestly the ripping out things part is the thing I was trying to get rid of. Pounce should be an option for a Monk, I totally agree. And now it is as a Fighting Style ability because that was a great idea. But if some Monk wants to be a Cheetah Monk and we give him a feat that gives him the stances he would/should have chosen anyways then that isn't good design. If the class can do it perfectly fine by itself then we should let it, because if I make a Monk character and there is a feat I can take to get 3 free styles, one being a Grand Master style then I will take that feat. I will take as many of those feats as possible, and it won't have anything to do with me being a Cheetah but will instead have to do with me liking free abilities. With the Tactical Feat path you allow a Monk who wants to be a Cheetah Monk take the styles and abilities he's going to choose anyways, to be as "Cheetah-ey" as he desires. And THEN you give him a feat which lets him be "Cheetah-ey" in ways the class cannot well replicate. Perhaps something like.....

Cheetah School Monk (Tactical)
Prerequisite: Armored in Life class feature, Run
Claws: You may opt to count your slam attacks as claw attacks which can deal slashing or piercing damage.
Skulk: Any Hide or Move Silently checks you make while in a Fighting Style, Master Fighting Style, or Grand Master Fighting Style that increases your movement gains a +2 bonus
Velocitous Sprint Technique: You gain a Fighting Style that grants a +60 insight bonus to movement. In addition when making a charge in this stance you may move up to 4 times your speed before the attack, as opposed to 2 times your normal speed.

Now the character has a few little things that make him feel like he wants to feel, and that people would notice. He has also gained useful abilities so the feat is still a good use of his 7 lifetime feats (An average character could charge someone 360 feet away while in the last stance), but he's still going to play like all the other Monks. He still chooses his own abilities and styles and doesn't get them faster than he should.

[Calibron]

Am I the only one who thought

So if you want a laser eye beams, don't feel restrained by choosable Monk abilities. Make a laser eyes feat and make it choosable by any class. Call it Eyes of the Archon or Acolyte of the Burning Stare or Evoker's Blood (eyes). Let Serpent Sorcerers get Hooded Cobra Attacks and Poison Claws, and you'd be surprised by how fun your game gets.

was an important point and a good idea?